Job Details
Title: Founding Software Engineer
Location: San Mateo, CA (Onsite)
Type: Full-Time
About Ventus AI
Ventus AI builds computer-using agents — autonomous AI workers that operate software like humans do: reading emails, navigating portals, entering data, and syncing systems without APIs. We’re automating real workflows in freight and logistics — from quoting and scheduling to billing and compliance — and already live at major brokers and shippers across the U.S.
Backed by a16z and built by serial founders, we’re turning agentic AI into infrastructure for the industrial world.
The Role
We’re looking for a founding software engineer to help us scale the core engine behind our AI agents. This is not an experimental R&D job — you’ll be building and maintaining robust production systems that interface with real-world environments full of edge cases, ambiguity, and operational complexity.
You’ll work closely with our co-founders to set technical direction, establish engineering best practices, and ship fast — all while having the opportunity to shape the company’s culture, product, and future.
You will get a front row seat in customers’ interactions - this is critical if you want to create your own venture in the future.
What You’ll Do
Design, build, and maintain mission-critical infrastructure for agent orchestration, memory, logging, security, and observability
Write production-grade Python (and possibly some TypeScript) to power low-latency, fault-tolerant, agentic workflows
Establish testing, CI/CD, and monitoring pipelines from scratch
Own system reliability: debugging flakiness, edge cases, and performance bottlenecks
Collaborate with product, research, and field teams to bring new capabilities to life
Make key architectural and technical decisions that will shape our core systems
You Might Be a Fit If You…
Have built and maintained production systems end-to-end — from idea to deploy to debug to refactor
Thrive in ambiguous, high-autonomy environments where you’re trusted to figure things out
Have deep comfort with Python (async, testing, deployment) and modern dev tooling
Understand the trade-offs in system design and can keep things simple without being fragile
Have a founder mindset: ownership, urgency, and comfort with chaos
Are excited by the idea of building agents that operate on messy real-world software instead of APIs
Bonus Points For
Experience with agentic frameworks, browser automation, or secure data processing
Exposure to freight, logistics, manufacturing, or other ops-heavy domains
Open-source contributions or prior startup/founding experience
Why Join Us
Real product, real customers — not just a demo
Lucrative equity — you’ll be early enough to have meaningful upside
Zero bureaucracy — just you, the code, and the customer
Explosive growth — opportunity to lead, build, and learn faster than anywhere else
We believe the future of work involves fewer humans clicking buttons.
If you’ve built real systems and want to build something meaningful, come do it with us.
How to apply?
Please email careers@ventus.ai with your resume.